1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a fiber dyeing method and a dyed fiber product using citrus fruits.
2. Description of the Related Art
Hitherto, it has been widely known to employ dyes extracted from natural plants for dyeing fiber products, such as threads and cloths.
A typical example of such dyeing methods is called dyeing with vegetable dyes, in which a decoction of roots, stems, barks, leaves, flowers, seeds, etc. of various natural plants is made and used as a dye bath.
For example, fibers (fiber products) are dyed purple by mordanting using an extract solution decocted from roots of gromwells. Also, fibers are dyed red by mordanting using a bath of a dye extracted from roots of madders with hot water, or by direct dyeing using a bath of a dye extracted from petals of safflowers. Further, fibers are dyed deep (indigo) blue by reduction dyeing using fermented leaves of Japanese indigo plants (called Sukumo in Japanese).
For dyeing fibers yellow, such plants as an Amur cork, gardenia, turmeric, Miscanthus tinctorius Hackel (called Kariyasu in Japanese), myrica, saffron, Arthraxon hispidus Makino (called Kobunagusa in Japanese), and Garcinia subelliptica Merr. (called Fukugi in Japanese) are used. An Amur cork is a deciduous tall tree, and a solution extracted from fresh-yellow parts inside barks of Amur corks is employed for dyeing. A pigment component of an Amur cork is called berberine that is only one basic dye among natural dyes. A gardenia is employed in direct dyeing using a bath of a dye extracted from seeds with hot water.
Fibers dyed using natural plant dyes are excellent products having delicate, deep and tasteful color tones. However, because the number of kinds natural plant dyes is small and dyeing methods are delicate and complex as described above, it is difficult to always obtain a desired hue with stability.
Dyeing with natural plant dyes gives thin colors in many cases and has a difficulty in achieving fast dyed colors even with repetition of the dyeing. Also, since the dyeing time is very long and the dye bath is not homogeneous and has unstable quality in many cases, it is not easy to realize a process for obtaining a stable dye bath.
In particular, when endeavoring to dye fibers in a mandarin or orange color, i.e., in a typical yellow color, by a conventional method using citrus fruits such as mandarin oranges or bitter oranges, it has been impossible to reproduce a fresh and bright color specific to the citrus fruits.
With the view of overcoming the problems set forth above, it is an object of the present invention to provide a dyeing method and a dyed fiber product which can achieve dyeing in a fresh and bright color tone specific to citrus fruits in vivid fashion with good mass productivity.
According to a first aspect, the present invention provides a fiber dyeing method including a step of dyeing a fiber with fine powder of peels of citrus fruits, the fine powder being obtained by pulverizing dried peels of the citrus fruits. According to a second aspect, the present invention provides a dyed fiber product that is dyed using fine powder of dried peels of citrus fruits.
Further, the present invention provides a fiber dyeing method wherein the dyeing step is performed using a bath of a dye extracted from the fine powder of the peels of the citrus fruits, or performed at the same time as extracting the dye. In the fiber dyeing method, preferably, the fine powder of the peels of the citrus fruits is powder having passed a sieve of 140 to 50 mesh.